Saturday, September 4, 2010

Going Batty (for cookies)

As summer draws to a close, we've already touched on owls, and spiders, so it seemed only natural to move on to bats.

First off, my youngest two, helped me put together a batch of bat cookies. Again, we turned to the sugar cookie dough from Deborah Pearson's Alphabake Cookbook (which I'm not being payed to promote, but do recommend), with 4 tablespoons of bakers cocoa added. One of my friends asked me recently, if my kids get tired of all the cookies. Well...nooooa! Does anyone actually, ever get tired of cookies?

Anyway, I rolled the dough out, and the girls took turns cutting out circles, for the bodies...


...and flower shapes...


...which they cut in half, for the wings. Cutting a flower shape exactly in half, is quite a challenging task for a four year old - so some of our bat wings were a bit lopsided. C, was very determined to do it herself, though.


Finally, we added half marshmallow, and chocolate chip eyes (just like on our spiders), before baking.


The eyes could be added after baking, to keep them from melting so much, but I wanted to keep little hands away from hot cookies, and pans, so we added ours first. And, we ended up kind of liking the crazy bat eyes, the melting provided.


We ate our bat cookies while watching The Magic School Bus Going Batty, here, on Gamequarium.

Then, I sent the older children on another pilgrimage to the library for bat themed books. They returned with some real beauties, that ought to be enough to keep us occupied for the long weekend, while the library is closed. I hope to post about all of them later today, or tomorrow, for the What My Child is Reading link-up, at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

7 comments:

Christy Killoran said...

My son loves bats. As a matter of fact, we always adopt animals for Christmas and he picks the vampire bat every year. Here is my post about our bat theme with some cool bat cupcakes: http://superheroesandprincesses.blogspot.com/2009/09/going-batty.html

Christy Killoran said...

I think I forgot to write that I love the bat cookies and I'm adding those to my to do list. My son will love them.

Joyful Learner said...

My daughter would love you! Unfortunately, we need ours to be gluten, dairy, wheat free. Your kids are so lucky to be watching Magic Treehouse and eating batty cookies to learn about bats! I once did a unit on bats and they are fascinating creatures!

Brimful Curiosities said...

There's a new book that will be released later this month called The Bat Scientists by Mary Kay Carson. It's been getting some really good reviews and deals with the white-nose syndrome.

Phyllis said...

I love the photos in your kitchen with the sun shining from the window and cookie dough being cut on the table. Such a comforting scene!

Unknown said...

I rather like those crazy bat eyes, too!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I was thinking that you have some sort of alphabet theme in mind - from apples to bats. I know one little girl that would go batty for those bat cookies.